


November

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Boys In Love, Developing Relationship, Episode: s02e16 Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking, Established Relationship, F/M, Falling In Love, Filming, First Love, Friendship/Love, Gay, Gay Sex, Hong Jisoo | Joshua-centric, Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Secret Relationship, Yoon Jeonghan-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: A love story between filmmaker Joshua Hong and anthropologist Yoon Jeonghan, set between London, Paris and Dresden. A couple for six years, they live in inherited luxury in Chiswick, until, one day, their relationship begins to evolve. "November" eloquently shows the intimacy that defines a relationship.
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something quite sweet and pure. I was watching a "The Vicar Of Dibley" episode in my room one night, and I just felt this sense wash over me. Sometimes, it gets too much. I'm a devoted and proud pagan woman, and I just got this sense of betrayal, by watching a British comedy about a inbred Church of England village with a jolly, all-knowing and chubby female vicar and her tribe of loveable maniacs. But, hell, why should I be bothered? It's a piece of art, designed to make one happy. And it makes me very happy. But sometimes it just feels so much; me and my indigenous against the world, people so superficial and stupid and ridiculous, their perception if the world a constant affliction because they think they know everything and they know nothing. This constant ignorance. It makes me very angry; you put it behind you because you know that you're better than them, but, with all people, it can reduce you down to something quite small and tired.
> 
> So, I wrote "November". There's a Gabrielle Aplin song called "November"; for reference, she's a British folk singer-songwriter. When I was little, I was given her CD as a present; Christmas or Birthday, I can't remember. Anyhow, I remember that. There's something so inexplicable in that memory; just the memory of youth.
> 
> No wonder we all try to remain young.
> 
> This is a work of fiction, "November". 
> 
> Love can be so happy, so fulfilling, but it hardly ever is, in the stark naked truth. It's why I created this; this idealism, this paradise, this artwork to shed tears with. Love in it's purest and most naked form. Love with the rest of the human psyche taken away.
> 
> We all compete for it - we're all desperate for it - but hardly any of us get it. Judi Dench once said, as advice to het younger self in a documentary "Tea With The Dames", to not be so susceptible to falling in love. Maggie Smith immediately told her off, and chastised her for such rubbish.
> 
> "We should all fall in love; we should all let ourselves live with it." Maggie said.
> 
> Judi smiled so softly.
> 
> Two beautiful, and lived old women together.
> 
> Do you ever get that? That feeling that you're getting old? That you are old?
> 
> It's become my habit.

_Saying that I want to forget, must have been a lie_

"Oh, fuck me dead." Joshua said, looking at the smashed window in his kitchen, his neighbours children following behind him in muddy shorts and long-sleeved shirts and hand-knitted jumpers made by their dressmaker Mother. Joshua want so much cross as stunned, and the children were only four and six, anyhow. And they didn't mean it. The little one darted around his hip.

"Careful of the glass, hey, hey, careful, little one." Joshua guided the small child back to him as he went to investigate the broken glass, and the part of the tree in Joshua's garden that was now coming through the window, it's leaves having been brushing up against the window for months.

"Should we get Nanny?" The little one asked.

"How's Nanny going to react?" Joshua asked.

The little one and his brother looked at each other around Joshua's hip.

"Pretty bad." The bigger one quipped.

"Yeah, she might cry." The little one remarked.

Joshua sighed and took them out into his back garden, before opening the gate in his fence and ushering them through it, so if their Grandmother came looking for them, she didn't have to worry that they had been abducted. The door in his back fence had been put in when he had lived with the love of his life. Joshua's chest hurt sharply at the memory of Yoon Jeonghan.

.........

They are both ducks in the water in England. Joshua was studying filmmaking. Jeonghan was studying genealogy and anthropology. Joshua wasn't quite sure if he wanted to stay in England forever, make it his home. Jeonghan loved the rain and the other cold weather's, the people, their accents, and, again, the people. But, then, the study of people was his career, so Joshua smiled at that.

"I love the Welsh men." Jeonghan once enthused to Joshua. "The study if them, I mean, sorry." He laughed. "Their dark hair and skin and eyes and this consistent manner that their race has; the sense of tribalism, the common personalities which raise their children and carry their relationships. It's so cool. The ethnic identity as well, that the Irish and the Scots don't quite have. But I like with the Scots - the Jekyll and Hyde. I think of them like animals. The Welsh are black panthers, for instance, and the Scots hyenas. One minute, they can seem ordinary, going about their business; they can move in with you and laugh and be happy, be friends. Suddenly, this look comes into their eyes and makes their mouth show their teeth, and they've turned on you. They're foul-mouthed and violent and manic."

"I'll make a film about that." Joshua told Jeonghan. "How they all interact and kill each other. Make a psycho-thriller or something set in a Welsh village."

Jeonghan laughed again. "Most of my friends are Welsh, and they all have brothers and sisters. There your cast organized."

They fell in together so simply; it's effortlessness was beautiful.

They were in Chiswick, where Joshua lived. "Ooo, rich man." Jeonghan had laughed when Joshua had given his address to a middle-aged black cab driver that he had actually had drive him twice before.

"Boy, he is." The cab driver agreed with Jeonghan. Joshua ducked his head and tried to shrug off the jokes that came from the cab driver, inquiries about if he does "legitimate tax avoidance measures".

"That's just a stupid way of saying tax dodge, right?" Jeonghan checked with the cab driver, not quite understanding his English. When the cab driver confirmed what it was, everyone burst out laughing.

Joshua has a black front door that had become a cherry red front door at Christmas that had become a creamy-pink shell coloured front door in the Spring. He had found a very good friend in his next door neighbour, a account married to a dressmaker with two little boys and a mother-in-law with multiple sclerosis. It had been his idea about the ever-changing front door. His clients kept coming to Joshua's house, instead of next door. Both houses had had black doors. So, at Christmas, and deciding that red was a Christmassy colour, the account helped Joshua paint his front door. Still, the clients came to the wrong door. The accountant advertised that he was the black door, not the red. The dressmaker wife suggested the creamy-pink colour. No more clients came to the wrong door; why on earth should a accountant have a creamy-pink door? 

That night when he came home with Jeonghan, his front door had a wreaths of peonies, ivy, hawthorn, and mini liner chocolate balls with a card in the centre. Joshua's skin coloured. It was a strange gift for a man, but the dressmaker was the dressmaker. It was a thank you from her for getting het terminally I'll mother some equipment for their disabled bathroom via online shopping. 

"The chocolate's a nice touch." Jeonghan had laughed again - he always laughed and gazed and smiled - when Joshua explained, embarrassed. Jeonghan took one if the Lindt balls and unwrapped it, putting the wrapper in his pocket and the chocolate in his mouth. He doubled over a second later from the shock of the richness of the blend. 

"It's probably best to just have the one unless you have a strong stomach, they can make you feel really ill." Joshua helped Jeonghan inside, and could hear through the hall in his house the sound of the little boys playing with their toys. It sounded like they had got the tonka trucks out. Lots of vrooming! and aahing! All the houses in Chiswick were alike Joshua's; most of them were three stories tall with attics; they had entrances that came up a set of stairs that had black cast-iron railing and bay window-sills. They had a paved space beneath the entrance out the front where the rain pooled green and black moss, where people had little chairs and tables and pots of plants. Most of the houses had a room beneath the entrance, their windows - all 19th century or older glass - looking out onto the sunken front and upward to the city above.

The scent of the river Thames was always in the air. It got into the washing that hung onto the line. Joshua had a huge back garden with freshly-mowed grass, overgrown hedges and fig trees. There was a smattering of other growths; lavender, peonies, daffodils, jonquils, agapanthus. He hadn't planted anything. Gardening wasn't his niche; all of it had been in the house when the old couple had died. 

It was true when Joshua had told Jeonghan and his favourite black cab driver that he wasn't rich.

He had inherited the house from a man who had formerly been his favourite man in the world, and his tutor. Phillip had been the one to coax Joshua out to England in the first place. Phillip and his wife Rosemary had had Joshua live with them, even with Rosemary having a stuttered heart-beat, dementia and arthritic bones. Worse, was the unknown cancer that had filled up Phillip's body, constantly poisoning him as he filmed Joshua. The best way, the old way of the book, Phillip had taught him, to get into the film industry was to be someone's muse.

Joshua had been in three of Phillip's films. Most people, especially at the University, had him picked as an actor, rather than a filmmaker. But it was a creation of a production that Joshua loved; it was his greatest love, and he did nothing but nurture it, even for all the long hours.

That was what he loved about Jeonghan. He loved how Jeonghan had fallen just as deeply for his genealogy and anthropology. It meant they both understood; Joshua understood if Jeonghan couldn't make it for a weekend date because he was on a train to Aberystwyth in Wales to see a 850,000 old skeleton that had been found thirteen years previously beneath the sand of Aberystwyth's beach. It meant Jeonghan understood if Joshua didn't get home, back to their bed, until half one in the morning, or, was out of the door at five in the morning.

It hadn't taken long for Joshua's bed go become their bed. From the first night, really, it had become their bed.

It hadn't been rough fucking, or a one night stand. It hadn't been a matter if friends with benefits. They had both wanted each other. Unlike any other couple their age, they had given it time. Months to burn slowly and evolve and transcend any remains of shyness or uncertainty, selfishness, downright foolishness or immaturity they had.

They had stepped into Joshua's bedroom after sitting on the rug in front of the couches in Joshua's sitting room for a few hours, watching the television with lamps around the room turned on. Most of the furniture in the house was Phillip and Rosemary's. They had no family. Phillip had been a POW in the second world war. He had been horrifically abbused. "I told one of the Kraut filth that they were big homosexuals; big gay men, licking up the sides of the other soldiers members." Phillip had confessed to Joshua one day with a laugh. "And, so, they mutilated me." He gestured down to his lower body. Phillip had lied about his age on the form. He pretended to be nineteen and a half when he was in fact fourteen. When Phillip was young, Joshua saw in the photographs of him, he was a strong and tall and proud man. Joshua knew he had always been that way, and he thought it a miracle of sorts of how the war hadn't taken it out of him. Joshua wondered if Jeonghan could tell that the house wasn't quite Joshua's; he wondered if Jeonghan could tell that he hadn't chosen everything. It made Joshua's heart break sometimes; this was someone's whole life, a entire marriage, that he lived amongst every single day.   
When they had gone into Joshua's bedroom, Jeonghan had immediately came over to Joshua and kissed him. It had been there first kiss, and so gently had Jeonghan's hands been around Joshua's neck. With that kiss came a release for the both of them; it was akin to been washed clean. Something in them soared, but Joshua felt like he was filming - or, rather, been the subject, been the subject filmed - through a soft-focus lens. And was a soundtrack worked out to be performed? Yes, just quite; but it was as soft as the lens. It was as beautiful as the feeling of the heart that Jeonghan flooded Joshua's body with. 

How interesting you are, Joshua had thought of Jeonghan as he held the other man also, his arms wrapping around Jeonghan's back and holding him at the sides.

"There's a soft-focus rawness and a gentleness they have here." Jeonghan said to Joshua as they lay beside each other in bed afterwards, the lamps on the bedside tables turned on, but, otherwise, the night's darkness filled up the room. "In Korea, it's all toxic. Have you ever felt that? All this hiearchy and girls getting beaten up by other girls in school because her Dad has a particular job. Making kids feel like they have to kill themselves because they didn't get a certain score on a math's test. Working so hard to do the best you can, and you're getting held back."

Jeonghan's head was sunk into the pillow. He flashed Joshua a tiny smile. "Maybe it's just me tired of Korea." He said.

"Maybe I'm just in love with England."

"My escape." Joshua confessed as well. 

Their relationship formed effortlessly.

They were happy. Jeonghan met the accountant and the dressmaker next door; one night they came over for dinner, and their little boys went to slepe in Jeonghan and Joshua's bed. Joshua had photos on his phone of them sleeping, as did the dressmaker and the accountant. Joshua thought it was one of the sweetest things he had ever seen.

"Do you like children?" Joshua had once asked Jeonghan. Jeonghan had hesitated.

"I'm not really sure, Josh." Jeonghan admitted. "I can't really say."\par  
In a way, Joshua had been relieved by Jeonghan's response. He couldn't quite explain it. He couldn't quite explain either why he had asked.

Later that night in bed, Joshua pressed his forehead against Jeonghan's. Jeonghan's sleepy breath, smelling like peppermint toothpaste, touched Joshua's mouth as Jeonghan breathed. A Parisian anthropology professor had praised work of Jeonghan's in a discovery that they had made earlier that morning before Joshua had discovered the note on the floor written by the dressmaker, she having slipt it through the letter-box in the front door, asking them around. Jeonghan had done a write-up of the remains of a 289,000 year old skeleton found buried in a bog in Jutland, rural Denmark. Jeonghan had showed Joshua a photography of the professer; he had sallow skin and a wart on the rim of his eye, with gleaming teeth and snowy-white hair, prematurely amiss of pigment at scarcely more than fifty-two or three. The professor sent Jeonghan and email; a request for frequent correspondence. An invite one day to come to Paris and talk to the studies there of mainly the anthropoligical study conducted in Western Europe and the UK. The attention from the professor had sent Jeonghan into a reverie. He had jumped into Joshua's arms in the kitchen and had made out with him, Jeonghan's arms entweing tightly around his neck.

"Imagine what a life in Paris would be like?" Jeonghan had asked Joshua.

"Would you and I really leave here and go over there, where no one knows what to think of us?"

Joshua had smiled gently against Jeonghan's mouth as they kissed again. "I think they'd be the same." Joshua spoke of the countless girls that got huge and sweet and human crushes on both he and Jeonghan, not at all realizing the connection that lay between the two. When the two of them were at University, they were in seperate structures, seperate ends of the world. Joshua and Jeonghan didn't go out to the University parties or to clubs where most of the dancers were idiots that purposely walked on the lawn to antagonize the gardeners, that lawn their most beloved child. When they did go out, they went to the sort of places that the other University students dreamed about on Tumblr blogs; they went to be amongst behind the scenes of museums (Jeonghan), where Jeonghan was freely allowed to show Joshua human remains hundreds of thousands of years old. When Joshua had first told his Mother, she seemed slightly put out, but he explained it further; it wasn't jsut the remains of once living human beings. Jeonghan showed him the duscoveries made in the Darwinian age; preserved animals and naturalist bodies and books that were already hundreds of years old when they were stolen in bent Victorian political society. Joshua took Jeonghan to all the places he knew; his friend's river canal boat that could neatly sink at one end if one more bottle of wine was added to the rack, into the wardrobe scene of the Royal Ballet Academy where Joshua helped filmed their adverts for a ballet called Giselle; one time, a visit to Abbey Road. Jeonghan had nearly pissed himself laughing at the sight of London motorists flipping the bird and generally doing their nut as tourists lined up on the Abbey Road zebra crossing and took selfies, no awareness for the local commuters at all.

"Would we be freer in Paris?" Jeonghan asked.

Now, in the night about them in the bedroom, Jeonghan's dark eyes were illuminate, and his chin was smooth. The lines of his body visible - his neck, jaw, shoulder - to Joshua's gaze seemed to soften and shrink, as they though they were becoming children again, a strange sort of magic as they connected together, simply to just be. Now in their mid-twenties, they looked around at other men their age. Jeonghan talked about it to Joshua: "In even the space of one generation, our Father's to us, there has been a change in the genetics, in all the races. Black, Asian, Anglo, Scandinavian, Germanic, Serbian, Mediterrainian, Cymry, Celtic, African, Aboriginal, Maori, Indian, Arabic, Israeli, Jewish - " Jeonghan effortlessly went through a entire list of the world's racial groups and identities. "The male body and it's appearence has changed. The faces are more effiminate, there's less hair, the texture of skin and the appearence of the bone structure in the face, shoulders, hands, chest and hips has changed. You never see men anymore that look like our Dad's, for instance. It's as though something as just changed." He snapped his fingers in gesture. Joshua had recently been watching the old James Bond films, trying to get some inspiration for a bit of a mute spot. He realized that Jeonghan had tapped into something that he saw every single day; when did anyone last see a man or men collectively that looked like Sean Connery or Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton?

The accountant next door had a thin nose and wrists covered with a dense blonde hair. He was a large, sturdy man, his neck rising thick out of his chest. He had incisor teeth like gleaming drills, and Jeonghan said he was heavily Germanic in his blood. "Quite rare, nowadays." Jeonghan had once remarked, finding the accountant fascinating to study as the man clamped his hands together at the back of his neck as he told a story of yet another Tory-party politician wanting a bank account organized on the sly to hide tax money. 

You're the last of a dying race, Joshua thought of the accountant whenever he saw the man or heard his children through the wall, or the clattering call of his wife as her knitting needles slid to the floor as she got off the sitting room floor to attend to her wheelchair bound Mother.

Joshua felt his arousal growing between his legs as Jeonghan shifted closer to him, Jeonghan's hand curving up around the shape of his neck.

Jeonghan's skin was soft and supple to the touch and scented because he had had a shower earlier. Joshua thought it almost a shame to ruin the clean, vibrant scent with his sex to later cover Jeonghan. Almost. 

Joshua guided Jeonghan's right thigh up over his hip, the inside of Jeonghan's thigh hot against Joshua's skin. Joshua tried to kiss Jeonghan, but Jeonghan teased him sensually, moving just out of touch. He let Joshua's hand move over his thigh and beyond, feeling his skin and the heat of the flesh.


	2. Two

When the next weekend came, Jeonghan left to go to Swansea University for two months. Joshua said he'd come down on the train and visit. He kept to his word, if slightly late. There were too many genuine happenings that would sound like the weakest excuses. A meeting with a agent from Metro Goldwyn Mayer of which Joshua was incredibly ashamed. The man that Joshua had met was nearly inhumanely tall and thin in a sharp and beautifully tailored Burberry suit which Joshua distinctly remembered; if he ever came across the scent again, he knew he would connect it with this. 

Damien McCartney.

Joshua closed his eyes at the thought as he packed his suitcase to go down and see Jeonghan. He lay down on their bed, and tried to get the thought out of his head. It felt apalling.

Damien's eyes had illuminated when he had seen the grand piano in the glass-house alfresco that came out onto what had been Rosemary and Phillip's back garden. He and Joshua had gone out to a French food, but Joshua had found the food disgusting. They had canceled their orders after the first course - oh which Joshua had barely managed half - and out of guilt he bullied Damien into not paying. Joshua took Damien back to his place; the French restaurant was close enough for them to walk. From there, things had fallen into place. Damien's jaw had dropped at Joshua's house.

"Rich man." He had said to Joshua like Jeonghan had and Joshua's favourite black cab driver had. The tips of Joshua's ears had flushed red. Joshua had brought out whatever he had stuffed in the pantry in glass bottles. The grog was cheap; the cheap that would come with a student apartment in Camden - which was expensive enough with it's drug addicts and mentally ill hipsters and botoxed lawyers - not a multi-million pound home in Chiswick.

But where was he? The piano.

Damien had taken a seat at the instrument as Joshua had opened up the glass french doors with the wine in hand. Wine over beer, Damien's preference. That was fine. "Where on earth did you get this?" Damien asked. Joshua opened one bottle and poured it into one of Rosemary's antique crystal glasses.

If only the poor woman saw me playing house with her and her Mother's things, Joshua thought sadly.

"It belongs to someone else." Joshua responded truthfully. For the next two hours, they talked about Joshua's career. Through connection with Phillip who was prevalent in the British industry, he was been offered a eighteen-month beginning contract to work as a filmographer at the MGM studios, after a tenancy at the BBC for a telefilm produced by United Artists, a company by Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Joshua didn't know what to say. But his breath got caught up in his chest as Damien went to lift the lid over the piano's keys to play them.

"Please don't." Joshua told him shortly. Damien gave him an inquiring gaze. He had got himself into a spot of where he would need to confess.

"That belonged to the old couple that died here." Joshua said. "It hasn't been played since they passed away. One had cancer, one had dementia. They had no children or family. That's how I came to be here."

"It saddened me to hear Phillip had died." Damien said after a few moments. He respectfully closed the lid over the piano keys. "How long did Rosemary -"

"Eight months." Joshua said quickly. He didn't want to talk about it.

The power abruptly went out. Joshua swore vilely, and Damien laughed. He murmured about how it was a sign from Rosemary and Phillip. Joshua had a brief flashback of both of their funerals of where they ahd both been born in a village in Yorkshire where they had both been buried at the end. Joshua lit candles and brought them into the alfresco, putting them on top of the piano and some of the floor. The alfresco's floor was timber, rather than flammable carpet. "How are you getting home?" Joshua had rushed to ask Damien when he saw on the grandfather clock in the dining room that it was a quart. to eleven.

"I came down on the train, actually." Damien confessed. Joshua didn't know if Damien could get a midnight train back to wherever he had come from. Joshua had no idea where Damien was going to sleep, either. There were two spare bedrooms, but absolutely bloody not. Damien's meeting was one of business; Joshua had never met the man before in his life. Joshua didn't even want the man sleeping on the couch. It was a beautiful original chesterfield as well. They were made to be sit in, not sleep on.

Before Joshua quite understood what was happening, it was happening. Damien's thin, lithe-fingered arounds were curved over in a hold on Joshua's shoulders and Damien was kissing him. Like a candle snuffed, darkness came over Joshua as his eyes slipped closed at the touch of Damien's mouth on his. For a few moments it felt like Jeonghan's, but Joshua had to remind himself that Jeonghan was looking at human remains in a museum crypt in South Wales, not here in London with him, in the Alfresco with the candles blazing and the power off and the piano touched. Joshua's hands came onto Damien's chest, and pushed him away.

"You can't do that." Joshua said. "I've got a boyfriend." A moment later, he regretted it. He had confessed Jeonghan to a stranger touching him, a stranger that should know nothing. And, in saying "boyfriend", Joshua had admitted something else. He knew he should have opted for the easier way out, the concrete one. Say he was straight.

"Where is he, then?" Damien asked. Joshua refused him.

"That isn't any of your business."

"He's not here." Damien replied. He kissed Joshua again, and smoothed some of his hair behind his ear. The gesture was too intimate, too close to handle.

"What do you think you're doing?" Joshua abruptly said, moving to pull away from Damien, but Damien held him in place, so he couldn't move.

"You're beautiful." Damien told him. Their foreheads and noses bumped. Their lips brushed again. "One day I came to visit Phillip here in England, and I saw you alseep in the armchair here in the house. You were so peaceful, and so beautiful yet so unaware of it."

"Don't be stupid." Joshua told him sharply. 

"I'm not." Damien said simply. He kissed Joshua again. Too many times. Even worse, Joshua's fingers pressed in a hold on the lapels of the black suit jacket, keeping him as close as the other man was keeping him.

It didn't feel like cheating. Joshua didn't think of it as cheating. He blamed it on the pwoer outage. He blamed it on the darkness. He blamed it on the candles gently illuminating the alfresco into a glow. He blamed the pain in his chest from when the agent had brought up Phillip and Rosemary and Jeonghan. Joshua blamed it on everything. Absolutely everything.

The train ride to Swansea filled Joshua up with a soft-focus opaline home. He had a window seat in the carriage, and he spent most of his time looking out of it and taking photographs. As he crossed over the Welsh border, he texted Jeonghan. Jeonghan sent him a video. It was pissing down freezing rain, and then the camera lens turned onto to other people in a huge and vastly grand room with framed timber ceilings and Victorian wallpaper with gold and stained glass chandliers with antique furniture. In was one of the main halls in the naturalist institute, and Joshua knew that Jeonghan was having the time of his life there amongst the dusty Victorian-era books and the freezing weather and the sing-song Welsh accents. Jeonghan told him that they'd meet out the front of the Insititute and that he'd have an umbrella for when Joshua got the cab from the station. 

Everything went perfectly.

Jeonghan was open and smiling when Joshua stepped out of the cab and immediately into his arms. "Hey, there's a room down the hall where we cna have sex." Jeonghan joked, tilting the black umbrella to shield he and Joshua from view as Jeonghan quickly kissed him, and the rain was still kept off of them. Joshua pulled his suitcase out of the cab's boot, and they went inside the Institute. The institute had the same mute grandeur of appearence from the outside as the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Inside, it was completely original, and it had enough people to seem scarce but to be made alive and comfortable. The Institute was partly a museum, but it wasn't entirely open to the public; barely one weekend a month was it open for visitation. Otherwise, it was the playground for creeps like Jeonghan, as Joshua termed it. 

Jeonghan pulled him into a domed ceiling library with sparkling chandeliers and Jeonghan dumped Joshua's suitcase onto a table. Jeonghan came over and kissed Joshua fully on the mouth, and Joshua couldn't help but immediately groan with longing. He had wanted this. He had needed it so much. Jeonghan's arms wrapped around Joshua's back beneath his coat, keeping him close, not that Joshua would ever move away. Jeonghan's teeth bit as Joshua's mouth, and the feeling was electric, pulsing through Joshua and making his head swim blissfully. This was the release he had waited for. Joshua dragged his hands through Jeonghan's hair desperately, feeling completely ignited. He wanted Jeonghan to pull him down to the ground; he just couldn't help himself.

Later that night when Joshua went back to the apartment that Jeonghan was temporarily living in - a 1950's cream brick and brown tiled roof construction, Jeonghan living on the third floor, where in the courtyard garden and the garden surrounding the apartment block full of towering Slavic pines and hawthorn hedgerows - the two of them went down together again.

It was easy, down in Swansea. Joshua unconciously leaped into one of the biggets projects he had ever taken on.

It all started in a cafe one morning.

He went down with a letter for a woman called "Aeronwen". She was the daughter of one of the senior members on the board of the Institute, and there was a gala in the city on tonight; she was going to be her Father's guest, and her debut into the scene, gone from a young woman into one with a face. Jeonghan knew her well. He had been too lazy to go and look for her, but Joshua hadn't minded. He had made up a plan in his head.

The moment he stepped into a cafe, two women caught his eye. One of them was a sexy and curvacious woman with traditional Welsh faces and that dark skin tone asscioated with the full-bloods. She had masses of thick black hair and Joshua thought that Catherine Zeta-Jones was nothing in comparison to her. She was wearing a white spotted black pinafore apron, and had pencils curled in little bunches on her hair. She was taking orders in a ankle-length black skirt and a red wrap-waist top. She smiled and blushed when Joshua asked her where he could findd Aeronwen; he had a letter for her.

"I'm Aeronwen, me love." The woman tucked her notepad into her pinafore apron and shook his hand. She told him to wait at a table by the window while she fetched a basket for he and Jeonghan. Joshua's stomach flipped. Jeonghan had told people about him. About them. Joshua smiled widely.

There came the second woman. She was thin and small-boned but still had the same curved shaped of Aeronwen's, just in a different portion. She was wearing a grey empire-waist skirt that went to her mid-calves and a olive-green linen blouse over the top. She had thick brown hair in a french knot and very white skin, with a cupid's bow mouth, thick eyebrows, and brown eyes. She was bare-foot, and typing away at a computer. Joshua swore she glanced up at him and gave him a smile, all within a moment. Where Aeronwen was thick-boned in her face to the point of looking pre-raphelite, the other woman's white face was tapered into a shape that was akin to been Danish with a clear-cut jawline. 

"That's Winnifred." Aeronwen came back, and murmured into Joshua's ear. "She's beautiful, isn't she?"

Joshua nodded, not giving a verbal agreement. "What would she say if I said I wanted to film her?" He asked very lowly. He glanced across and saw that Winnifred had ear-phones on, and her typing was relentless, not breaking once.

Aeronwen laughed. "Well, that's cool, because she makes films, too." Aeronwen told him. "And she sounds like a Welsh Emilie Sande when she sings." She giggled again. "She can do everything."

Joshua brought her home, to Winnifred's immense shock. 

For the next two weeks, she slept on the couch in the sitting room while Joshua filmed with her everyday. They filmed in the apartment, they filmed in her two story Tudor house in Conwy, in the North of Wales, where they caught a train up to it and stayed overnight. They filmed in the opera house, and on the front steps of the palace.

When it was completed, Joshua sent the film to Damien.

The first reply Joshua recieved from Damien was: "Who is she?"

Joshua thought that himself. He wondered how to say it. Who was Winnifred?

Joshua wondered if in Jeonghan's mind it was a step too far when Joshua suggested they bring Winnifred home to London. As it turned out, perhaps thankfully, Winnifred was not able to come to England. She and Joshua stayed in touch. Joshua wondered for a week what he wanted of Winnifred, and what he wanted of the rest of the world to want of her; all the while, he was concious of the time that passed. Joshua put his headphones in and listened to Winnifred singing on the train back to England, back to London while Jeonghan slept in the seat beside his, his head falling onto Joshua's shoulder. Joshua had his arm securely around Jeonghan, and he thought about the future. The two months at the Swansea historical and anthropological naturalist institute for Jeonghan had ended. Joshua laughed at the size of Jeonghan's contact book when they got home and Jeonghan unpacked his case on their bed. 


	3. Three

Joshua and Jeonghan laid down on their bed; Joshua tucked himself up inbetween Jeonghan's legs, reclining back lazily against Jeonghan's body, Jeonghan's arms loosely around him. Because of this, neither of them noticed the post-man slip a solicitor's letter through the letter-box built into the front door.

The probate become completed on something that Joshua hadn't known. Because he was living with Phillip and Rosemary when Phillip had first passed away, and Joshua inherited the rights of power of attorney over the properties and money from Phillip, especially for the worse-conditioned Rosemary, he had been allowed to live in the Chiswick residence. Out of respect for the old couple, and the fact he was not their child, Joshua had probed through their legal documents and list; it felt like a insult. Because of this act of foolishness, Joshua conceded it was though he had felt sincerely, he had not noticed the listing of a house in Yorkshire. House had been an understatment. Sprawling maedieval Manor, more correctly termed. Jeonghan had nerly passed out when they pulled into the driveway of the property; on the outskirts of the Yorkshire village, the house was surrounded by nearly two-storey high hawthorn hedging, moulded down in a half-moon shape at the top of the hedge. Inside was a semi-rectangular set of cream-stone gravel and moss-covered 1930's grey-stone pavers, with heaps of potted plants. The house had a grey thick roof, with characteristics everywhere; accents of slate, red brick, limestone, concrete, bay windows, sailor windows, a bit of grotting from the 1920's on one section of the house, now crumbling away by the weather. Inside, the house was completely nostalgic, 500 years of style all in one. "We're in our twenties, what the fuck are we going to do with this?" Jeonghan had yelped at one point. The house was fully furnished, early Scandinavian Art-Deco pieces mixing with the British interpreatition of the style, to more modern furniture in mute tones, which Joshua guessed were from the late 1990's and early 2000's. Most of the properties maitenence through the probate had been looked after by members of the local council and the local Church. This surprised Joshua. Phillip and Rosemary weren't really Church-goers; they were both christened when children, but, one day, it had been found that the church that Phillip and Rosemary went to for weddings and fuenrals of family and friends had not one, but two paedohpile priests through it. Phillip came to loathe Christianity and it's people after that revelation. Rosemary was in the same boat, but she was more graceful in her revulsion. Joshua was a baptized Christian, but he didn't say to the elderly Vicar that he wasn't one of the Church-of-England flock. Joshua didn't think himself as one of the flock he couldn't help but having been put into spiritually, either.

Catholicism was worthy of a Monty Python sketch when his life came into focus.

The Vicar invited them to a church service on Sunday. Joshua agreed; unbeknowest to Jeonghan, Joshua knew it would get them into the village good-books. And it would mean that no Tory-party trueblood, tax-evading land-owners would bully them into selling the maedieval house out of pure spite.

"And the angel Gabriel went down." Jeonghan remarked to the Vicar; the Vicar had brought up how the local school had been charged with the mission of coming up with a "new Christmas carol".

Joshua nearly went to his knees as he just about pissed himself laughing. The Vicar saw the humor in the quip, and didn't chastisize Jeonghan. Joshua later found out the Vicar's good nature; he hadn't realized that Joshua and Jeonghan were a couple. Joshua had said to Jeonghan earlier to have some respect for the Vicar who had buried Rosemary and Phillip, but Joshua hadn't realized of how good a job that Jeonghan had done. Joshua reflected that if the Vicar realized how kind he had been to a same-sex couple, he'd have a prize-winning fit.

They stayed that night in the maedieval house. The bed creaked, and Jeonghan complained that there was a spring digging into his lower back, so he slept on top of Joshua.

"The priest looked like he'd be really dirty in the bedroom." Jeonghan opined to Joshua, half-asleep. Joshua chuckled.

"Vicar." He corrected. "And he's at least sixty five, Jeonghan. I'm not sure he'd be able to get one up and keep it up without some serious medication."

"He was looking at you funny." Jeonghan mumbled. "All priests are dirty...I swear he was trying to fix himself a hard-on under the table in the kitchen."

Joshua laughed. "You don't have to worry." He pressed his mouth to the top of Jeonghan's head, trailing his fingertips down the line of Jeonghan's spine. "I wouldn't have him over you anyday."

"I should hope not." Jeonghan responded stiffly. Joshua laughed so much that Jeonghan complained he was as bad as that spring, keeping him up all night. Jeonghan went back to his side of the bed. The linen smelt like Rosemary; her washing-powder that she had used for decades upon decades. 

"There's another way I could go about keeping you up all night." Joshua ventured. Jeonghan opened a bleary eye.

"I am not having sex with you in Yorkshire." Jeonghan swore blind. Joshua sighed silently, and looked up at the ceiling, Jeonghan going to sleep. A few minutes later, Jeonghan's hand reached over and slid inside Joshua's pyjama trousers, wrapping around his length. Even though it was just Jeonghan's way of apologising, Joshua's heartbeat sped up, and his head tipped to the side on the pillow, looking at Jeonghan's sleeping face.

"So...we're coming back here Saturday evening to be here at the Church service that we have to go to on Sunday morning?" Jeonghan asked the next morning, wandering around the kitchen naked except for a shirt of Joshua's, which, on Jeonghan, came down to cover him enough. Joshua thought Jeonghan looked like the male version of that one scene that was in all the traditional romance films. He smiled a bit to himself. He had always like Jeonghan's legs. Jeonghan had a mug of coffee held in both of his hands, and his hair was in a similar state to that of a bird's nest.

"No skinny jeans." Joshua told Jeonghan. "And nothing brightly coloured." 

"Is it a funeral?" Jeonghan quipped.

"And nothing with holes or distressed aesthetic about it." Joshua added.

"Looks like I'm wearing something of yours, then." Jeonghan rolled his eyes. The next few days went by quietly for the two of them, but, as far as work went, it was a storm. Jeonghan was working on a one hundred and fifty page work for the Parisian professor with the wart on the rim of his eye to be published into society and several journals, and Joshua's film had made a tidal-wave of contact; emails, phone calls, texts, letters and door-knocking. Joshua and Jeonghan treated it as a game. Whenever someone knocked on the door, there were three things: Joshua Hong lived by himself, Joshua Hong was not in a relationship, and Joshua Hong did not have anyone else at home. 

Jeonghan shut themselves up in their bedroom with his laptop everytime someone knocked at the door.

The third time, it was Damien. Joshua's throat closed in on itself, his stomach twisting itself into knots at the sight of inhumanely tall and thin man. Joshua couldn't do anything when Damien leant down and kissed him, his index and middle fingers holding Joshua's jaw. Jeonghan was in their bedroom, but that was upstairs, so he couldn't see the inside of the hallway. Jeonghan wasn't going to be eavesdropping either. But Joshua couldn't say to Damien about Jeonghan; Jeonghan wasn't supposed to be there. But here he was, Joshua's boyfriend, hiding away upstairs while Damien came through the front door. Joshua felt sick at the sight of Damien's face. Because Damien thought he was alone, Joshua was sure he would try it on.

Joshua jerked in Damien's arms as Damien's hand snucked around and groped at his backside. In response, Damien chuckled against Joshua's mouth, and pushed him up against the side wall in the entrance hall. Joshua hoped Jeonghan had his ear-phones in. Damien's hand slipped in-between Joshua's leg, and, in a involountary response, his hips bucked up, so used to that feeling. But this man wasn't Jeonghan. Damien murmured in his ear about being eager. Joshua nearly had a heart-attack.

"Come one, come on." Joshua pushed at his chest. "We've got money and business to discuss." He looked sharply at Damien. "We're supposed to be talking money and business."

Damien conceded the fact, and, as far as he went, Joshua thought he handled it well. As well as he could anyway while he couldn't think straight. As soon as Damien left, Joshua ran up the stairs to he and Jeonghan's bedroom. He crawled over the bed and shut Jeonghan's computer lid for him before kissing him desperately, pulling at his clothes, trying to get them off.

"What brought that on?" Jeonghan asked afterwards.

"Just wanted you." Joshua responded breathily. 

Jeonghan smiled. 

The drive to Yorkshire hung about in Joshua's memory, and he knew it would still be around for years to come. Joshua was driving, and Jeonghan was curled up in the passenger seat, sunk down a bit beneath the head-rest, and his legs were piled over each other on the dashboard of the passenger seat. It was beginning to get dark earlier, so while they drove along the M4, it was dark. They played the BBC radio 1, which at night was taken over by DJ's. It was crap, but they had no other CD's to play, so they left it on. Jeonghan's hair got illuminated everytime a overtaking car went past, or they overtook someone. They talked about everything; the properties, the work, dealing with smartarse natured solicitors who took their race before anything else.

Jeonghan told Joshua that sometimes it was the most amazing feeling in the world, this grown-up thing. But it also the most tiring thing in the world, sometimes.

Joshua told Jeonghan he still thought he was beautiful, even after nearly five years of having known him. 

The moment was so simple yet it was so deep. It left Jeonghan gazing intently at Joshua, and Joshua returned the gaze whenever he could, in quick, short glances. When they eventually drove through the edge into the maedivel property and got inside, Jeonghan gathered up Joshua against his body.

"I want to make you dirty before Church tomorrow morning." Jeonghan told Joshua before kissing him. Joshua held him back, and gave Jeonghan everything he wanted, and did whatever he wanted to do. Joshua mused at how rare it was for someones like them, and at their age, to have something like this. 

"I thought you were never going to have sex with me in Yorkshire." Joshua echoed to Jeonghan. Jeonghan's hand creeped in-between his legs.

"I'm sorry. I was just being stupid about being in someone elses house." Jeonghan admitted. "It's always someone elses bed. Even though they're not here anymore."

The new house gave them a sense of life; they ran about like children. Joshua pulled up outside the church in their Vauxhall, and he and Jeonghan fiddled with each other in the back seat. Joshua got through the Church service easily, having done this ritual as a child. He and Jeonghan didn't sit together. Joshua told them to be as far away as possible, and Jeonghan couldn't look and smile at him. In a village like this, it would cause world war three; even though it was true, a gay Korean couple would have them run out. Joshua heard a man say a few rows behind that Jeonghan was "up and down like a whore's draws". Joshua did his best to not turn around and thump the man in particular. It wasn't Jeonghan's fault that he didn't know to sit, kneel or stand, and that he didn't sing along with any of the hymns or look at the Vicar with unserving faith, utterly trustful of the message of Jesus Christ - as viewed by the Church of England - he preached.

Jeonghan was quiet as they got back into the car. Joshua reflected at how much kinder that the Church of England services were than the Catholic ones. At the end, the Vicar had called out Joshua and Jeonghan, and told the rest of the Church of how Joshua had been "Phillip's protegee in the film industry and as good as a son to he and his wife Rosemary" and how "he is now a filmmaker himself, with colleague Yoon Jeonghan". Jeonghan glanced across at Joshua. Colleague. That was suitable. Joshua had said to the Vicar that Jeonghan was helping him making a film; a business partner. It was why Jeonghan was with him, after all.

A feeling of dread began to feel Joshua. Depending on how he and Jeonghan worked it, everyone could very easily and very quickly realize.

"It felt so fake." Jeonghan admitted to Joshua after they had picked up a few things in the local village grocer, where half the wares were displayed out on tables in the back garden behind the shop.

"It is fake to you." Joshua replied. "You're not a Christian. You don't believe."

"I'm glad of it." Jeonghan said. They went silent. Joshua made amends.

"Phillip and Rosemary would approve."

He and Jeonghan laughed.

"It's hard." Jeonghan said. "All these men and women coming up to you about the house and the village and the Vicar in the house the other day. They're all obsessed with this house in this village."

"They're all the same, all over the world." Joshua said. "Villages. They're all in-bred and full of old blood and old money and blood that grows richer and blood that turns to muck as each generation incests and corrupts and backstabs anf does everything to their own benefit. It alters a bit differently with each place; in America, they have guns, in China and Korea and Japan, they bargain away their children and use the sins of the grandparents. And, in England, it's like a horror film." Joshua paused. "It's pretty here. No wonder Rosemary and Phillip lived here when they were children and had the house here. Most of the people are newcomers; they don't have any understanding of what would go on. They see a place like this as little children do; bright and fresh and rural, sweet and simple and like this sort of paradise. Paradise on earth. But I know better. We know better." 

Jeonghan held onto the shopping basket as Joshua filled it up with fruit and vegetables and other nesseceties.

"Where did all your innocence go?" Jeonghan said. Joshua looked at him. "We knew each other for years, of each other, and I know we only really got to know each other that night after we first slept together. But...I don't know." Jeonghan ducked his head. "That sounds to harsh for you to say; when I saw you before and when I see you now."

Joshua kissed him. "I don't want to upset you." He paused. "I had my Mum and Dad, and then I got raised again by Phillip and Rosemary. My parents taught me things, and, where we get to the stage where we begin to teach ourselves things, I didn't have that growing-up I guess, because I stepped in with Phillip and Rosemary. When we get to forty, everyone says about the idiot twenties, which is our stage - before, I guess. Phillip and Rosemary - I'm grateful to them. I've still got the hope and sense of life and loving from Mum - things that your Mum teaches you." Joshua smiled. "But I lived with life who saw everything that life does. Does that make sense?"

Jeonghan smiled. "You'll be the best filmmaker ever." Jeonghan told him sincerely.

"What's that girl's name, again?" Jeonghan asked later that day when Joshua was making lunch. Jeonghan had offered to help, but Joshua insisted he was fine doing it by himself. There were no take-away shops in the village bar one fish and chip shop - which was shut - and the pub, along with one restaurant, but it didn't open until seven that evening.

"What?" Joshua said, slicing a loaf of bread.

"Winnifred?" Jeonghan remembered correctly. 

"Yeah, what about her?"

"What's going on with her?"

"What do you mean?"

Jeonghan rolled his eyes.

"You make a film with her in it and - I hope you keep in touch with her. You were frinds weren't you?" Jeonghan made his point.

"Yeah, I'm still in touch with her." Joshua blinked.

"So, what's happening with her?" Jeonghan asked. "What's happening with your film?"

Joshua sighed. "The agent I met is from MGM; Metro Goldwyn Mayer. I sent him the film, and after he watche dit he gave it to senior members in his area of the company; at the moment legal stuff is being worked out between me and Winnifred. I've made the film without company backing; so, therefore, there's investment oppotunity, and my way into a place. Through Phillip, I always had a job organized; film at the BBC after this year of Universtity ends; I won't need to continue it. There's a job open for a telemovie made by the BBC and produced by United Artists, a section of Metro Goldwyn Mayer. A company bought up by them. It's a bit difficult; no one quite rings you up properly or tells you anything." He and Jeonghan both began to eat the sandwiches Joshua had just made.

"What did you think of Winnifred?" Jeonghan asked. "I'm just asking because I haven't seen the film yet. Remember you haven't showed me it, right? What made you go for her?"

Joshua thought. As he and Winnifred had ran around Wales filming...it had felt like a dream. An affair. A whirlwind of dates and times and the time of the day as well; how quickly it flew by. Driving in the car, getting on a train, the lens zooming on Winnifred's face and her body - Joshua's heart sped up. He re-lived the rush and the excitement of the process, and the gravity of it's exertion. The getting tired, the getting weary, the getting high, the getting hungry, the looking at the clock in shock and racing to get back to their homes in the back of a cab or on foot.

"Her bare feet." Joshua said slowly. He did not lie. His explanation formed in his mind, seeping through there like fabric dye in laundry water. Bleeding inwardly. "She was so natural. Her hair was thick and it had a funny texture; it was soft, but it wasn't. She washed it with goat's-milk soap. And her feet; they were rough-skinned and dirty on the bottom. They were pitch black. Her nails were bitton down on some fingers but then others were cut properly with scissors. She wasn't wearing any make-up. Her lips were chapped, and she had thick brown eyebrows and very dark eyes. But she's beautiful." He began to laugh, in slight wonder. "She's beautiful."

"What's the film about?" Jeonghan asked. Joshua breathed out slowly.

"It's a series of things." He explained in a manner that was still slow. In a way, he was thinking about it for the first time. "It's like...fifteen music videos entwined together with a voice-over. It's not something indie, and it's not..." Joshua hesitated. "It's cold and realistic and sharp; she makes it funny and chaotic and happy."

"What happens in it, thought?" Jeonghan pressed.

"Her jealousy." Spilled out from Joshua. "My jealousy. Our realism; how we know better and yet we get shit on by the rest of the mentally-ill, damaged, ignorant, naive and stupid people on this earth because they can't handle the truth; it upsets them, it makes them retarded. More than they are. It shows seven different versions of Winnifred which are like seven versions of me; then it lapses into one - it goes from her inside, me inside - to then the outside. What people don't realize; the outside image they just percieve. Her trying to fall in love and make that connection and serve and eliminate and uphold, me trying to do the same thing. Her indigenous. My..." Joshua trailed off. The tidal-wave had finished it's flood. Now, things were underwater. His head was underwater. He was underwater.

"Oh my God." Jeonghan said softly. Lunch was forgotten. 

Joshua suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He left the kitchen and went out into the back garden. He suddenly wished he smoked; just so he'd have something to do with his hands. Something to fill in the time. Something to bleed away the shame. Joshua didnt't even really know if it was justified. Why should he be ashamed?

But he was.

Joshua - who had been looking out forwardly into the garden sightlessly - glanced to the ground, and then to his side, coming back to his senses as he felt Jeonghan's arms wrap around him, and Jeonghan's head rest on his shoulder.

"You're goanna make it, you know." Jeonghan told him. 

Of course you are, a voice in the back of Joshua's head echoed Jeonghan's words.

"I hope so." Joshua swallowed.

They ended up staying that night at the property. Joshua tucked himself up in bed with Jeonghan and Jeonghan took him through the work he had been writing for the Parisian professor with the warted eye. Jeonghan was to release a provocative work of how the indigenous Cymry - Welsh - and Celt Gael - Irish - and Manx - Scottish - races had existed even through the change from neadnthal to homo sapien, and how the Cymry, Celt Gael and Manx races were ultimately the oldest Nedanthal "species" outside Africa. Jeonghan talked for hours about how the thought had been developed by indigenous religion, and then the discovery of the jaw-bone on the Aberstwyth beach in 2007, some 850,000 years old. 

Jeonghan's enthusiasm made Joshua forget about the rest of the day.


	4. Four

Throughout the night, Joshua dreamed a dream so vivid that he thought of it as two things; it was like a premonition, but it was like a film, playing over perfectly in his head, as though he was watching it on the screen.

The next morning, Jeonghan asked him about Winnifred. He obviously thought that he wasn't keeping in touch with her enough. Joshua had a gentle sort of epiphany; he realized that Jeonghan thought that Winnifred had to be his obsession, his muse, his creation, his art, his bid to get her connected. Because if she wasn't - to him, that didn't make sense. Why wouldn't it be like that?"

"I like her hands." Joshua found himself saying. "They're woman's hands. Not a man's hands. Not like yours. Not like mine." 

Joshua, who was sitting on one side of the preperation table in the kitchen, drew over one of Jeonghan's hands across the table; Jeonghan was standing on the other side. He had been drying bowls and plates with a tea-towel.

He bit Jeonghan's index knuckle gently between his teeth, and while Joshua looked at Jeonghan, he saw the shiver that went through Jeonghan, and how Jeonghan's eyes flickered between his hand at Joshua's mouth and Joshua's eyes. "Come on." Joshua said softly. "Let's go back upstairs."

Jeonghan hesitated. "What are you trying to tell me, Shua?" He questioned.

"That it's not what you think." Joshua held Jeonghan's hand acros the curve of the side of his face. 

Jeonghan's own face was open, and his eyebrows lifted. He pulled his hand from Joshua's face. It was quiet in the maedeval house, the only sounds about were the occasional crunch of four-wheel drive 80's series range rovers on the ruined bichemond road outside their hedge, and the sound of the odd hunting group; the howl and the bark of trained dogs, a red fox dead somewhere, the shells of gun bullets lying in un-mowed grass in open fields.

What does Jeonghan know? Joshua asked himself, but, yet, he understood.

Jeonghan's eyebrows were still lifted, and a awful feeling filled up Joshua's chest and stomach. It was though a third persons was in the room; Damien, Winnifred - as if they were one step removed from he and Jeonghan's intimate circle of confession, witnessing it all. There he was, Joshua, sitting at Phillip and Rosemary's former kitchen table, trying to get his boyfriend to touch him and fuck him in the old couples bed upstairs. It was a repulsive image.

"What do you want me to do, Hannie?" Joshua asked.

Something inside Jeonghan made his mouth curl. "What are you talking about?" he said. "What are you saying?"

"Do you not want me to see you anymore? Or, at least, not right now?" Joshua questioned.

Jeonghan reached back over to Joshua, but, just as Joshua went to recieve him, Jeonghan moved around to the other side of the table. He went to sit down in a chair beside Joshua, but Joshua drew him into a hug. He wanted to hold Jeonghan.

"It doesn't make a difference to me if you do your work with a woman or another man." Jeonghan said. "But it -"  
Later that day, Joshua walked across the grass of the field behind the maedieval house. The grass was tall and green, and Joshua passed through it's length as he moved, like he was wading through water. He had his phone pressed to his ear. He barely understood what on earth he had tried to achieve with Winnifried; it had been like a madness, that art. There was huge portions of it that he couldn't remember. The production of it. Joshua heard Jeonghan shout his name from beneath a willow tree that hung over the back fence, a tiny arch in the hawthorn hedge, that led out from the maedieval houses back garden to the fields behind. He called both Damien and Winnifred; cancel things, re-invent things, try to remember things, try to escape things, try to work out things. There would be a few things to go back inside with Jeonghan, quickly clean the kitchen and bathroom and make the bed they had slept in; drive back to London and get back to their own home. Do the same process there. See the accountant and the dressmaker and their little boys next door. All the while Joshua would know he hadn't done any of it right; he had done everything in a way that did not work while the dressmaker asked, "Did you have a nice time in the country?". There would be enough time for Jeonghan to kiss him on the mouth before they went to sleep in a way that proved that Jeonghan had been right all along.

The next morning, he and Jeonghan were slept in late. It was ten 'o' clock before either of them woke up. Both of them had tossed and turned throughout the night. Just before they had woken up, Jeonghan was lying on his back with one arm above his head and the other out to the side; Joshua was sleeping on his front with his arm's around Jeonghan's chest, his head on Jeonghan's arm, and his left leg over Jeonghan's hips, the inside of his thigh against Jeonghan's crotch.

"Oh, shit, what's the time?" Joshua said, waking up sharply after his eyes had opened, and he had had a few blissful minutes, half out of it, of watching Jeonghan's sleep; feel Jeonghan's chest rise and fall by his own body, the pulse-beat of his heart beneath teh translucent skin of his neck. Ba-dump...ba-bump...ba-dump...

Jeonghan's head tipped to the side. His eyes were still closed. "I saw the clock a few minutes ago...just before ten.  
Joshua swallowed heavily. "Fuck, I should have been up at seven..."

"It's ok, you don't have to go everywhere." Jeonghan's eyes opened. Joshua fell silent, temporarily caught up in the specterochromatic illuminance of them, the morning sunlight bleaching through the crack in the curtains, making the fabric hot. Rarely did the sun come in London, as bright as a Californian or a Australian sky. "You said last night that you had to meet-up with someone at half past eleven - that's still an hour and a half. Plenty of time to calm down and have a shower. Don't stress."

"What about you?" Joshua asked.

"I sent off the work to the Professor last night." Jeonghan smiled faintly. I don't have anything else to do; just wait for him to get back to me. The only reason why I'd have to go into the Uni today is if he and I work it out that way."

Joshua hadn't realized any of it. "I didn't realize you had finished." He admitted, his throat feeling dry and closed. Jeonghan smiled at him sunnily. The sunlight made his hair glow.

"Yeah, all finished."

While Joshua was in the shower, he could hear nothing of what went on outside the room, especially with the water gushing from the shower-head and the ceiling fan running for the steam. Jeonghan could hear everything that went on inside. Jeonghan opened up Joshua's laptop; he couldn't work out the password, so he gave up on it. he checked through Joshua's phone instead. That didn't have a password lock on it.

He scrolled through the text messages that Joshua had sent to Winnifred. Jeonghan didn't really know what he was looking for. There was nothing there apart from pure professionalism, or, the quick "How are you doing?" and "oh no, what happened?" from both Joshua and Winnifred.

However, there was something else. The contact was saved under DAMIEN: MGM

So, this is the agent, Jeonghan thought to himself. But, to his disappointment, there was nothing bar professionalism there either. There was one text there that delighted him. Damien had invited Joshua out, and Joshua had sent back that he wasn't coming out; he was with his boyfriend.

Jeonghan smiled. 

He turned off Joshua's phone and put it back on the kitchen table where Joshua had left it. 

"Myself and my colleagues want to design it as a brand." Damien said to Joshua, one of his senior colleagues from the United Artists company of the British MGM sitting beside him; the colleague was a stocky man with a less handsome face to Damien. His appearence faintly reminded Joshua of Roger Moore, but he had a look in his eyes that wasn't so light-hearted. He had thick square-famed glasses and a rolex watch. Joshua sipped a glass of water. They had coffee. "A Youtube channel, a full brand."

The colleague was called Alfred. "Damien has had me convinced you want to work in one of our companies." Alfred said. He stared at Joshua. "But that's not true." He paused. "What is it about the term "artist" you don't like, Joshua?"

"I've never thought of myself as an artist." Joshua replied simply. "I'm a filmmaker."

"Define it to me." Alfred drank some of his coffee.

"Artists are arseholes." Joshua said after a few moments. "No other way of saying it. They are all back-stabbing, introverted, mentally-ill cunts who fuck you around and are self-obsessed and are just -" He broke off with a scoff. A wide smile was on Damien's face, and Alfred watched him. "I think they're disgusting."

"You yourself were the muse of an artist." Alfred said quietly. Joshua thought those words should have come from Damien's mouth. Alfred reached down to where his briefcase was against the table leg. He pulled out several magazines and other reviews that Joshua was shown in. 

"Phillip was different." Joshua's tone fell soft. He crossed his legs beneath the table, and held a elbow in each hand, folded over one another at his front. Joshua searched for a way to say it. "He was an old man when I met him." Joshua added. He looked at Alfred. "He had had his twenty, thirty years of impurity and selfishness and been a dick. When I met him he was aged...he was wonderful." Joshua stopped speaking.

"You care for him?" Alfred asked.

"More than you can imagine." Slipped from Joshua's mouth. He bit his tongue. Now, that's too gay for words, a silky voice murmured in his skull.

"Who did you work with?" Alfred remarked. Joshua frowned.

"No one."

"No one?" Alfred echoed.

"No one." Joshua said. "Just myself and Winnifred."

Alfred nodded his head. "That's an achievement." he said after a while. They lapsed into silence. Joshua saw a muscle twitch in Alfred's jaw. Joshua knew this wasn't how Alfred conducted meetings; he get control of them, booming, dominating. Usually the person before him was nervous. Joshua was nervous of nothing. These days, filmmakers could make it without the investment and the branding of big companies. He smiled. Self-creation was a wonderful bliss in this world. 

"Should I make you another film?" Joshua asked. Alfred and Damien's heads snapped up and around to him. "I've written something that I think you might like..." He hesitated. "I'll easily admit I'm ignorant in certain parts." He reached down to his own bag and pulled out a two-hundred-and-forty-page screenplay. Alfred and Damien's eyes locked onto it. Joshua held it in the air. "So as to give it to..." He moved it between Alfred and Damien. The corner of Joshua's mouth lifted on the right, and he put the screenplay back into his bag. Damien and Alfred stared at him.

Alfred laughed. It was masculine and booming.

"When I first came in, I took a look at you." He told Joshua. "I thought you were a bit of a faggot." He grinned. Alfred leant forward to the table. "So, what are you then?"

"I'm someone who you can make money out of, or I'm someone that can make money and doesn't have to give you a single percent of the total balance." Joshua replied calmly. 

Alfred looked up at Joshua, and his grin began to slip. A look came into his eyes. Joshua had taken control of his mission.

"You're a big man, then?" Alfred said quietly. "I think you're a bit of a smartarse, kid." he gestured to Joshua. "You and that girl..." He leveled a gaze at him. "You're just two wasteland kids running around the fucking countryside, making a dumb film..."

"Enough, Fred." Damien said. Alfred turned and looked at him.

"Nah." Alfred looked back to Joshua steely. He stood up, and collected his case and coat. "We've got another poofs in this business. All of them need to be gassed. You're just another one in my office, trying to get big." Alfred left; the last things Joshua saw was his tailored black coat. The vanishing starkness of the colour.

"I wanted you for us." Damien scribbled a phone number and a name on a piece of paper in a black-ink fountain pen. "But, it seems not." He slid it across the table to Joshua. "You'll do better with them anyway." He pasued. He straightened the lapels of his jacket. He looked down to Joshua. He leant down. "It'll be the biggest mistake of Fred's life that he didn't take you on." He whispered into Joshua's ear. "He'll regret it."

Damien left the restaurant, inhumanely tall and thin. Joshua considered the piece of paper before him. The ink was so rich that the rising scent of the ink drying burnt the inside of his nostrils. After the long one hour meeting, Joshua said goodbye to the inside of the restaurant with a sense of relief. As he walked home, and a Thames-scented breeze blew through the air and it carried Elm tree leaves with it, Joshua felt as though he was truly leaving something behind. 


	5. Five

Joshua came home to find the accountant and the dressmaker in his kitchen; she was in a 1930's style crepe dress, black with white spots, and he was in jeans and a tweed jacket and a blue-and-white-check button-up. Jeonghan was utterly alive. His eyes shone.

"We heard him screaming through the wall." The dressmaker hugged Joshua with one arm around his neck and kissed him on the cheek; she wore pearl earrings that were cold against his skin and she left a red lipstick mark on his pale skin.

"I've been appraised!" Jeonghan exclaimed, rushing into Joshua's arms and kissing him passionately on the mouth. The dressmaker cooed and applauded, and the accountant averted his eyes politely to his glass of wine. 

"Sorry?" Joshua said.

"And he's been insulted a few times for racism, but for every one that did another hundred have told them to shut up." The accountant added.

"Thanks, Jeremy Clarkson." Jeonghan joked with a beam. The dressmaker laughed. "My work's been a sucess." He told Joshua. "I'm going to be formerly published as well."

Well, I'm so not going to tell you about what happened today, then, Joshua thought of Jeonghan. Joshua kissed him. 

"That's amazing." Joshua said sincerely.

For a reason slightly unbeknowest to him, he brought out his laptop and sat it on the island bench, clicking his way through the document folders. "Tell me what you think when you hear this." He said to Jeonghan, the accountant, and the dressmaker.

"Halo

Chi yno 

A allwn fynd ag ef i'r lefel nesaf Babi, wyt ti'n meiddio?"

"Something Celt." The accountant's brow was slightly furrowed.

Welsh, Joshua mouthed as the song played. The song played was female, but it was smooth and deeply rich. It was slow. There was a soundtrack in the background; an orchestra. But it was controlled; it didn't boom out and overpower. It was soft and transcendent in the background, an aura to the words.

"Peidiwch â bod ofn 

Oherwydd os na allwch ddweud y geiriau 

Dwi ddim yn gwybod yn iawn pam fy mod i'n poeni."

"Beautiful." The dressmaker said slowly. One of her hands was pressed over her heart; the other hand held the stem of a wine glass, filled with rose liquid. Her nails were painted the same glossy dark red as her mouth was. The pearl earrings sparkled in the light of the kitchen.

"Oherwydd dyma fi 

Rhoi popeth y gallaf 

A'r cyfan rydych chi byth yn ei wneud yw llanast ohono

Ie dwi'n iawn yma 

Ceisio ei gwneud yn glir 

Nid yw cael hanner ohonoch yn ddigon. "

Joshua paused the song. The accountant and the dressmaker's faces dropped slightly, having fallen into a zone listening to the song. Jeonghan looked at him. His lips were parted slightly. He didn't say a word.

"The girl singing is Winnifred Pwhndag." Joshua said. "The one I did my film with. That song is going to be played in the film. What do you think of it?"

"It'll suit the tone of the film, depending what sort of scene you're going for." The accountant responded conversationally, and the dressmaker reached over and turned the song back on again.

"Dydw i ddim yn mynd i aros nes eich bod chi wedi gwneud."

The first line of the chorus was ethereal. The dressmaker's eyes slipped close and the accountant's eyebrows rose appreciatevely; he gazed at his beautiful wife. Jeonghan looked at Joshua. What are you doing? His mouth moved, asking silently.

"Yn esgus nad oes angen unrhyw un arnoch chi 

Rwy'n sefyll yma yn noeth (noeth, noeth) 

Rwy'n sefyll yma yn noeth (noeth, noeth). "

Joshua gazed back at Jeonghan, the same way the accountant gazed at his wife.

""Dydw i ddim yn mynd i geisio nes i chi benderfynu

Eich bod yn barod i lyncu'ch holl falchder 

Rwy'n sefyll yma yn noeth (noeth, noeth)

Rwy'n sefyll yma yn noeth (noeth, noeth). "

Shortly after, the accountant and dressmaker left to go back next door with a couple of bottles of wine and a set of smiles; Joshua had made a copy of the song and had it on a plain white CD so she could listen to the song in her studio, amongst all the dust and fabric. The accountant enthused delightedly to his wife at how she was the first person to have the complete soundtrack of the first of Joshua Hong's films. Joshua smiled. He was reminded again of what a nice couple they were; they were such nice individuals as well.

He and Jeonghan settled in the sitting room. Winnifred's song played in his head with such a clarity it was as though she was still playing from his laptop on the island bench in the kitchen.

hei mynd allan

Does gen i ddim ar ôl i'w roi i chi ac nid ydych chi'n rhoi dim i mi nawr

Joshua reached over and squeezed Jeonghan's hand. "I'm really glad." He said softly. "For you." He ran his thumb over Jeonghan's skin. "You're so happy doing that work; it's about time someone recognised your capability of doing that work so well."

A small smile tugged at Jeonghan's mouth. "I didn't think it was a woman at first." He confessed. Joshua's eyes fell onto his mouth as it moved. If Jeonghan was slightly upset or otherwise downcast - quiet, even - a change came over his face. Joshua thought he looked even more beautiful. And, there, as he spoke, his mouth looked beautiful. Joshua had a momentary flash in his head; that was what those lips looked like wrapped around his length in bed at Midnight.

"The voice was so...it, just, like, you know." Jeonghan rolled his eyes. "It's so weird, isn't it?" He looked at Joshua. "How we meet people and they can help us do stuff that in turn we meet other people in, which, just...like, it makes whole worlds." He paused. "And money. It makes so much money. Look at the guy who created Cold Feet; automatically, about eight people had full-blown careers, all because he and a couple of others decided to make a TV show."

darllen fy ngheg

Jeonghan's thumbnails were clean and opaline. They seemed to shine, though there was no proper light in the sitting room. They did not have any lights turned on. 

Os ydych chi erioed eisiau fi yn ôl yna mae angen chwalu'ch waliau

Jeonghan went to speak, but something in him made him stop. He looked at Joshua. Joshua thought he looked vulnerable and nervous. Joshua opened up his arms and Jeonghan shifted from the other side of the couch into them. He curled himself up neatly against Joshua's body. Jeonghan mused on how warm Joshua's body was. How pleasurable it was.

"I need to go to Paris." Jeonghan said in a small voice, almost afraid of the words coming out. His fingerstips wrapped into the front of Joshua's jumper. Joshua's body-heat made him sleepy, soothing him off into another world. His head swam, and his eyes grew heavy. "We need to go to Paris."

Jeonghan went to sleep with his head on Joshua's chest on the couch. Joshua tipped his head back and looked up at the ceiling, Winnifred's song playing over and over in his head.


End file.
